Analyst Mark Schroeder examines the pressures facing al Shabaab from a military offensive by Somali government and African Union forces, and internal divisions about how to respond to Somali populations suffering from severe drought conditions impacting Somalia.

Somali government forces backed by African Union peacekeepers arelaunching a fresh offensive against al Shabaab positions in the Somalicapital Mogadishu. This comes amid a couple of reports of strains anddissent within the Somali insurgent group al Shabaab that are compoundedby a significant drought that is impacting Somalia and much of EastAfrica.

Now this offensive is not the first time that TFG forces and African Unionpeacekeepers have gone after al Shabaab, and in fact it's been part of acampaign going back a couple of years, but they've never been able to gainfull control over Mogadishu. Al Shabaab to this point controls roughlyhalf of Mogadishu and the TFG might control the other half, but if werenot for the African Union peacekeepers, the TFG would have very littleunder its control and probably would've been ejected from Mogadishu a longtime ago.

Now reports of this new offensive against al Shabaab also comes amid thiswidespread drought that is impacting Somalia and much of East Africa, andthis drought has raised lots of humanitarian concerns for the populationof Somalia and others in the region. Al Shabaab itself is divided over howto handle and respond to the drought impacting the country. Some within alShabaab desire that foreign aid and relief organizations come in thecountry and help to respond to the populations impacted by the drought.There are others however, notably the faction led by the overall alShabaab commander Godane Abu Zubayr, who do not want foreign relieforganizations to come into Somalia. Godane's fear is that the relieforganizations can be taken advantage of by people who wish to betterunderstand the strengths and weaknesses and to exploit that to undermineal Shabaab.

Al Shabaab is not expected to yield very easily its gains in Mogadishu,its territory that to this point it controls, but al Shabaab has a proventrack record of melting into the background, withdrawing from thebattlefield, pulling back to positions in the rural areas of central andsouthern Somalia. So this fresh offensive in Mogadishu against al Shabaabshould be seen as an effort -- a limited effort -- to try to extend theTFG's control in Mogadishu, but nothing more than that at this point.